FAQ

My site

How do I use my own domain name?

If you have purchased your own domain name, you can use that domain name with your PhotoShelter site by setting up a CNAME with your domain registrar. Using a CNAME is possible with a Standard or Pro account. If you have a Basic account, then you can use your own domain name by setting up a basic forward or redirect.

Further instructions on setting up a CNAME and forward can be found here.

Who are all these people listed in my Account Signups?

Anyone who signs up for a PhotoShelter Image Buyer account via your website will appear in your Account Signups. There are various ways to sign-up for an account from your site:

When creating a Lightbox for the first time

When checking out via the shopping cart

Via the sign-up page on your site

Though someone may sign up for an account via your site, the account itself is still a PhotoShelter account, and is not necessarily specific to your site. Note that it is not necessary to sign up for an account while checking out, as we do provide a guest checkout option.

Can I have two sites with one account?

Unfortunately, there isn't a way to have two separate websites under the same account. You would actually have to sign up for a second, new account if you wished to create a second site with us. Please contact us for more information.

Help, it seems like anyone can download my images!

Don't worry, only those you designate as having download access, either by providing a password or log-in, can actually download your images! If you are experiencing otherwise, however, chances are you are still logged into your PhotoShelter account as the photographer. When you are logged in, and you visit your site, you will be able to download your own images because our system recognizes you. This does not mean that anyone can download your images.

Our contact form is made to be as accessible as possible to make it easy for potential clients to reach you. Occasionally spam bots may use your contact form to send you spam. The good news, however, is the Contact form on your site does not display your actual email address. So you can rest assured this person will not be able to contact you directly otherwise.

Why am I seeing "Image Temporarily Unavailable" in place of an image on my site?

Most of the time this will occur because the gallery has a visibility other than "Everyone". If you're featuring a gallery on your homepage, or embedding it into your blog, you'll want to make sure the visibility of that gallery is set to "Everyone" so that those images are available. You can learn more about visibility here. If you continue to see that message even though the gallery is visible to everyone, and you've tried clearing your cache, please contact us.

I made a change to my image(s) and it's not reflecting on my site!

Because of the way our content delivery network caches images, it can sometimes take up to 24 hours for a change to an image to be reflected on your public site. This can include changes to your watermark and using the Replace Image feature. Within 24 hours our servers will clear their caches, and your images will be updated.

The information in the left and right panes of my Image Browser has disappeared!

It sounds like your browser might be zoomed out. To rectify this, you will need to reset the zoom. On a Mac, you can click command + 0, or on a PC, control + 0. Alternatively, you can go up to the "View" menu in your browser, and reset the zoom there. That should set things straight!

Selling

How can I purchase prints from myself or order test prints?

While we do not have a "back-end" feature which will allow you to order test prints from any or all of our automated print fulfillment partners, obtaining test prints through PhotoShelter is still certainly a possibility. You'd just have to place your orders from the "front-end" -- your public website -- just as any buyer purchasing from your site would. You can even set up a coupon to use for 100% off to avoid having to pay yourself your marked-up prices. Here's a quick breakdown as to how this would work:

First you want to make sure that any images you wish to purchase have a pricing profile applied, just like anything else you wish to sell from your site.

If you have placed the images in a gallery with a visibility of "no one but me", you will need to use the direct gallery URL to view them. Otherwise, if they've already been marked as public in some way, just head over to your site to find the images in question.

Add the images to your shopping cart and check out (again, just as any other image buyer would). It should be noted that if you are using PayPal, they prevent you from sending payments to yourself, so you should not actually log into PayPal in order to pay but should rather pay using a credit card that is not linked to your PayPal account. Even though you are using a coupon, you will still be responsible for the shipping fee from the lab (but again, you are paying yourself this fee).

Once the payment is completed, you'll receive the amount of the shipping fee in your PayPal/Stripe/merchant account. However don't forget you will be responsible for the wholesale costs of whatever you have purchased. You will see those charges come through on your next PhotoShelter subscription bill/statement.

To review more information on Selling through PhotoShelter, click here.

What is the difference between working with your partnered labs and using self-fulfillment?

When you use your PhotoShelter account for selling prints, you have the option of working with one of our partnered labs: AdoramaPix, BWC, EZ Prints, Loxley Colour, and White House Custom Colour. These labs have products pre-integrated into our system, so you can easily decide what you would like to offer your clients and set your own pricing. Orders will then go directly over to the lab for automatic fulfillment -- no further action required on your part!

If, however, you prefer to handle your own fulfillment, either by working with a lab outside of our system or printing yourself, you can use our self-fulfillment mechanism. With self-fulfillment, you can still accept orders through your PhotoShelter website, as long as you first create the self-fulfilled items you'd like to offer.